How to Gain Twitter Followers

Rather than just waiting for Twitter users to follow you, you can pro-actively build up a big following, using a few different methods. Using these methods, you can obtain a local, national or international following, and even poach some from your competition.

NOTE: You will be approached by some users/websites, stating that you can buy followers. We don't propose using these types of services. This will get you penalised by the Search Engines!

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The two most successful ways to gain followers

There are just two primary methods to get Twitter followers that may purchase your products or services. All our recommended techniques involve you following the type of person/business you would like to sell to, and relying on the "50% Rule". You will be followed by around 50% of the people you follow back out of courtesy.

Everyone you follow will be exposed to your brand so 50% is not squandered. Accounts that follow you back are subsequently reached as a member of your audience. You can subsequently unfollow anyone who hasn't followed you back after a period of time (a week or so).

Both techniques take time yo evolve your follower base. Invest at least 20 minutes a week, or whatever spare time you can afford, to start constructing a fresh base of prospective customers.

Poaching Followers from Your Opponents

Locating your competitors isn't hard. You most likely know most of them and hunting in Google for your own products and services will find you dozens more, if not hundreds more.

Go to your competitors website, and check to see if they have a Twitter account. Click through to their Twitter page and above their tweets you will see a number with all the word FOLLOWERS under it. Click on their FOLLOWERS link, and take a look. You should find plenty of Twitter users that are ideal as your target audience. Simply begin following them. The more targeted the follows you make, the higher percentage will follow you back. There's strong evidence that this technique is extremely valuable for our business to business clients.

Using Twitter Advanced Search

The Twitter advanced search tool allows you to search for relevant Twitter users. This is perfect for finding local, international or national companies.

You may have to consider profiling of the kind of follower you're searching for. What would they've tweeted about? If you sell car insurance, then anyone mentioning buying a car, would be ideal. You do not have to enter a search term, if you're simply searching for people near you, the results will be full of local Twitter accounts.

You will locate hundreds, if not thousands of individuals, or businesses, that fit your profiled client, by using theses ideas. What's extremely smart is that you could also locate followers who are mentioning your competitors, asking them questions, or mentioning their names in tweets. These people are ideal for you to start following and getting your brand in their view, which could lead to you picking up their business, in the future.

We recommend you use these guidelines, when using the advanced search:

Searching for Words

All of these words:Anything you enter here will be searched for in any order (so you could enter new car if you sell cars).

This exact phrase:This will search for the exact phrase with the words in the order you put them.

Any of these words:Useful for adding lots of keywords in one go (car driving).

None of these words:These are useful to exclude things, so if you entered car above you might want to exclude wii, xbox, playstation, rally, racing and F1, to avoid computer games!

These hashtags:Great if your competition has been using specific hashtags (eg. #carsales).

People

From these accounts:Not useful for us.

To these accounts:Not useful for us.

Mentioning these accounts:Useful to find Followers that have mentioned (promoted) your competitors. Enter your competitors Twitter name here, with an "@" (eg. @PATRICKINTERNET).

Places

Near this place:Extremely useful to locate consumers or companies that are found near a particular location. If you JUST want consumers that are local you can enter your town name here without the other fields finished and you'll get a summary of ALL Twitter users that are local. Note: Twitter requests the users to complete this so it's going to hunt what the user has entered for their place. By typing UK you won't find everybody in the UK. You can type your local town names in for individual searches, and users might be found by you also there. You surely will if you're in a large town. Otherwise, then a county search might give better results.

Other

Positive:Not that useful.

Negative:Not that useful.

Question?:Useful to enable you to find clients and potential clients of your competitors. Anyone who has asked your competitor a question on Twitter could be perfect for you to sell to. Introduce yourself with a follow...